The History of Leonardo DiCaprio
by Harrand Dewagon
Summary: THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE ACTOR. Not really. It is a compilation narrative of many of his movies. The more movies of his you have seen, the more you'll probably enjoy this. That said, I hope you do!
1. Part 1

Leonardo DiCaprio was born in Mississippi in 1858. He and his father, Calvin Candie, lived on Candie Valley ranch with a host of slaves. Soon after the birth, Candie was shot and killed by King Schultz. One of the white ranchers around Candie's estate owed him a favor, so he rescued the infant Leo from the ensuing firefight with the former slave Django. This rancher was named John Herod. Candie's loss ruined Herod and other ranchers, so they all traveled west in hopes of finding a better life. They couldn't honestly make good living, so they decided to just take it. They invaded the town of Redemption and killed the Marshal there. Herod became ruler of the town and effectively disowned Leo.

As he grew up, Leo retained memories of Herod and was convinced he was his father and was denying it. Herod didn't want to tell him the truth, maybe because he didn't want Leo to gallivant off in search of Django. So Leo never knew his name (he'd never had one, really) and was known only as "the Kid." He had been there almost since the beginning of his life, so he'd always just been the lone youngster in the town to people.

In 1881, Herod held a shooting tournament When the Kid and Herod faced off in one of the final duels, Leo didn't get shots on Herod because of skill. Herod didn't want to kill Leo, but Leo wanted acknowledgment and respect from the man he believed to be his father, so he stubbornly remained in the tournament. Herod won the duel, but he was killed by "the Lady" Ellen soon after.

What viewers of that movie don't know is, both Ellen _and_ the Kid faked their deaths; only difference was, it was necessary for Ellen to reveal herself. Herod did shoot Leo, but there was a thick packet of the same fake blood under his shirt. It didn't completely stop the bullet, so he was still wounded, but not enough to die right away. They did it this way because the Kid _had_ to lose in order for the plan to work. That said, a bullet in the stomach is still a bit of a problem no matter how deep it is. Ever wonder why Ellen left so quickly and the movie ended so quickly? On her way out of the town, she picked up Leo and galloped to the nearest hospital before his intestinal damage was too severe. The doctor who came to see Leo said it _was_ too severe and there was nothing he could do. Except maybe…due to the nature of the injury…there was one thing.

It is generally understood that the science of cryonics began in the second half of the twentieth century, but in fact, the idea had already been thought of. It was not widely known, since doctors believed it would be largely received as against nature, and thus against God. Nevertheless, it was an ongoing endeavor around the world. That option was available for Leo. Ellen agreed, because with Herod dead, there was no one else who could, and it was the only conceivable way to save Leo.

Ellen died in the 1890s, so it fell to the doctors to judge whether or not to revive Leo. He was kept in storage, but pretty much forgotten about―he hadn't been anyone important, after all. Still, he stayed with the stock of frozen bodies as government investigations forced them to be moved every few years. The Roosevelt administration eventually cracked down on cryonic practice (still unknown to the public) to the extent that it no longer was feasible in the United States. So in 1903, the bodies were smuggled to England, a facility in Southampton. In six years, the British government found and arrested the researchers, but not before they ordered the bodies to be unfrozen no matter their condition. They felt it would have been unethical to rob any possible chance at life. Many died, but some didn't. Most of those who lived were on record and still had families. Leo had no name and no living connections. They were able to repair his wounds when he came out of stasis, but soon found that he had forgotten the little he knew about his background. He was a John Doe for six months. No one came to claim him, and he seemed functional enough, so they let him go and were done with it. He couldn't very well keep calling himself John Doe because of its stigma. So he decided to use a variation of it; the first one he thought of off the top of his head was Jack Dawson.

Jack, free of his traumatic past, was a lively and optimistic fellow. Though he lived poorly in Southampton, he made friends easily and was well-liked. Only occasionally did ghosts of his past whisper to him. Most notably, a single word kept coming up in his mind, one he'd heard many a time: "Draw!" He took it as a message, and he spent two years learning how to draw. He bet on sketchpads and stole them when he didn't win the bets. By 1912, his skills were undeniable.

In that year, Jack found a golden opportunity. He had always wanted to travel, feeling too large for one place, and it just so happened that the largest ship _in the world_ was to be docking in Southampton and sailing to New York. He won at poker to gain two tickets for himself and his friend, and they boarded the _Titanic_ with no time to spare.

On the voyage, he met Rose Dewitt Butaker when she ran for the railing with the intention to jump. Jack took it upon himself to talk her out of it. This is when Jack realized his propensity for creating stories. Devoid of a real past, he could easily make one up. He told Rose he was from Wisconsin to make a point about the cold water of the Atlantic. Rose fell off the side, but he saved her, and they spent the rest of the short trip trying to overcome the boundary of class to be with one another. Jack noticed, however, that Rose was uncommonly obsessed with him, given that they'd only just met. It seemed as though she was unsatisfied with her familial circumstances and was just using him as a means of escape.

Soon afterwards, the ship collided with an iceberg, setting the ship on a course, not to America, but to inevitable demise. The destruction was not immediate, so while the ship suffered a chain reaction of water overflow and system failures, the human-sized struggles continued. Jack began to realize how much this relationship could cost him. After Rose's fiancée framed Jack for the theft of a valuable diamond, he was determined to detach himself from her in a way without letting on that he didn't feel the same way about her. When Rose made it onto a lifeboat, he even insisted she go on without him. She jumped back onto the ship for him, and he kissed her to cover up how disappointed he was.

Finally, the massive _Titanic_ sank. Jack and Rose survived the sinking, as did most passengers, but the temperature of the water began to take its toll. They found a piece of driftwood that was clearly big enough for them both to lie on. But Jack had a plan. He made it seem like there was no room for him and made a show of not taking a turn out of the water, insinuating it was because he cared about her. His previous cryonic state had made him resistant to low temperatures, so he waited until the time he should have succumbed to hypothermia, and then he pretended to die. When he slipped underwater, he actually swam under the driftwood and silently broke the surface on the other side. He boarded the rescue boats separately and hid his face until they both arrived in the U.S.

When Rose was asked her name at the docks, he heard her say "Rose Dawson," which meant Jack couldn't use his last name for fear of connection to her. Throwing his first name around probably wasn't smart, either. So when he was asked his name, he hesitated. Straight initials would invite inquiries, which he didn't want. Maybe just the first name. He could still be Jack; he just didn't want the name in plain sight. So he answered, "J…" He remembered one of the patients that had been frozen with him and who hadn't made it: a James Gatz. "Gatz…by. J. Gatsby."

So Jack settled into the persona of Jay. Prompted by his near-death experience, he was determined to do the traveling he hadn't done the first three years of his new life. He wanted to make up for the unconscious decades. He had a fortuitous encounter with the millionaire Dan Cody during a boating mishap, earning him a mentor in the copper tycoon. They sailed on his yacht together for four years before Cody died. Jay returned to New York as penniless as he had left it, but he had gained something: knowledge of gentlemanly ways.

It wasn't long before he traveled again, though it wasn't of his own volition. He was conscripted into the army for the Great War. Before his training was complete and he was called over to Europe, his life changed forever. He met and fell in love with Daisy Fay. She, like Rose, was of a social stature far beyond his reach; but then, what he felt for Daisy was far beyond what he felt for Rose. He went and fought in the war and returned a hero, only to discover Daisy had married Tom Buchanan. He remembered how Caledon Hockley, Rose's fiancée, had bested him so easily, even though he had had the advantage of Rose's love. Daisy was not worth risking that again. He had to put himself into the position that would win her back.

Luckily, he was in the right place at the right time to do that. Never had it been so easy for a man such as himself to acquire vast amounts of wealth using only his wits. He made a covert business bootlegging alcohol, and after five years, there was no denying his prestige.

In that year, in 1922, Jay met a Midwesterner named Nick Carraway, who was in New York to become a bond broker for Wall Street, and who also happened to be Daisy's cousin. Jay sought to use Nick as a liaison to Daisy, since he couldn't bear to approach her himself. So he befriended Nick and wove his stories again, claiming a wealthy background and an Oxford education. Nick eventually arranged a meeting between Jay and Daisy, who started their affair soon later.

Jay cared for Nick, and while he still wanted to keep his past as Jack Dawson a secret, he also wanted Nick to have a better idea of how he grew up so Nick would not know him just as the privileged son of the high class. He switched from one lie to another; he claimed he was once James Gatz, again using the name of his unfortunate cryonic companion, and grew up dirt poor in North Dakota. The story was false, but it contained nuggets of the truth―indeed, more nuggets than he knew. He told Nick the full truth, at least, about Dan Cody.

Contrary to his life's greatest purpose, Jay was unable to fully reclaim Daisy's affections and reconstruct the past; he lost her to Tom once again. Daisy then inadvertently killed a gas station owner's wife while driving Jay's car. Tom, who had been having his own affair with the late woman, passed the information on to the owner, George Wilson, though they both believed Jay had been driving. Overwhelmed with grief and fury, Wilson broke into Jay's house with the intent of killing him. Jay was waiting for a call from Daisy at the time, but as soon as the phone rang, Wilson shot him while his back was turned.

Hit in the heart, Leo the Kid, Jack Dawson, and Jay Gatsby died almost instantly.

He never knew of the baby that he had put in Daisy's belly.

 **TO BE CONTINUED**


	2. Part 2

"Hey, didja see the latest on Frank Abagnale?"

"No. What'd he do this time, steal the Queen of England's tiara right off her head?"

"Believe it or not, he's working for the FBI. Check fraud department."

"Well, you can't get anyone better qualified. They trust him?"

"I mean, it's prison service. His sentence isn't over yet."

"Oh, alright. Y'know, I'm glad they finally got him, but you have to give the kid credit."

"No one else is going to anymore, that's for sure."

"Haha. That reminds me: management is complaining about us showing those news stories. They say it's too upsetting."

"I don't see the harm. But 's fine, I don't give a damn."

In 1999, former mercenary Danny Archer was imprisoned in Freetown, Sierra Leone for smuggling diamonds into Liberia. He had intended to use them to pay South African Colonel Coetzee, also a mercenary. In the same prison, Solomon Vandy, a native fisherman, and the rebel Captain Poison talked about a particularly valuable diamond that Solomon found in the fields of Shenge. Archer overheard them, and they all set out in search for the diamond, Solomon hoping to find his lost son in the process.

They came across Maddy Bowen, an American journalist, who was able to locate Solomon's son. However, the press convoy came under attack. Archer, Solomon, and Maddy Bowen escaped to the South African mercenary camp. They arrived and met up with Coetzee, where they learned his plan for a military strike on Sierra Leone. While Maddy flew to safety, Archer and Solomon continued on foot to Kono, where they discovered both prizes waiting for them, as well as the rebels. Coetzee and the mercenaries attacked, and in the battle, Solomon killed Captain Poison. Coetzee tried to force Solomon to uncover the diamond, only for Archer to kill him. Archer was shot in the process, but he still managed to get Solomon, his son, and the diamond to an airstrip before he finally died.

Dominick Cobb awoke, not in Sierra Leone, but in a flat in South Africa. Rutendo Zehir sat upright in his chair, though both Mal and Solomon Vandy were still asleep.

"Did he find the diamond?" Zehir asked.

"He did." Cobb described exactly where it had been buried.

"Where is it now?"

"He has it. His projection of Coetzee is gone, so he's safe with Mal."

"You have done good work," said Zehir. "I'm impressed."

"Yeah," said Cobb. "That's even considering you chose 'Captain Poison' as a codename."

"Where else but a dream can I go by such a ridiculous name? In any case, Mr. Vandy did not seem to notice."

"He killed you with a shovel, so he must've noticed _something_."

Mal stirred and woke. Cobb trotted over and held her shoulders. "Did you get him to give it to Simmons?"

"I did," she answered, still groggy.

"Good."

"Why does that matter?" questioned Zehir.

"Simmons was my projection," Cobb said. "As soon as Vandy wakes up, the projection'll disappear from his mind entirely. And if the projection has the diamond―"

"Vandy will forget it ever existed," Zehir finished.

"Exactly. He'll know nothing, and you can let him go."

"Well." Zehir pulled out his checkbook. "I think that takes care of everything." He scribbled for ten seconds, then ripped the check out. "Thank you for your services, Mr. and Mrs. Cobb."

Cobb took the check and confirmed the amount. $200,000. His eyes wandered to Zehir's signature, and he absently noticed it was of a type easy to forge. "Glad to help," he said. As they walked out, Cobb noticed his wife's lowered eyes.

"Mal?"

"I didn't like that," she said. "I don't want to do it again."

That was Cobb's last dream extraction for a long time. Mal was uncomfortable with digging through a person's mind against their will (even though she had no trouble keeping and spending the money, he noticed), so she wanted to simply experiment on their own instead. That's what they concentrated on for five years.

Cobb did do one more job without Mal's knowledge. He flew to Boston allegedly on business, though he had really been approached by a captain of the Massachusetts State Police, Oliver Queenan, who wanted Cobb's help finding a "mole" in the police force. Queenan and Sergeant Dignam followed Cobb, who adopted the pseudonym of Billy Costigan, into the dream of Colin Sullivan, a confirmed rat. Cobb essentially allowed Sullivan to play out the scenario as he believed it would go, which would, in theory, cause him to generate the other rat he subconsciously knew. Cobb eventually confronted and arrested Sullivan directly, which forced him to respond to the threat and bring the "mole" to the forefront: a certain Trooper Barrigan. The projection of Barrigan killed Cobb and woke him up. Queenan woke next and told Cobb that Sullivan had taken care of the rest by exposing Barrigan to the rest of the police force, thus informing the two real cops. In the dream, Dignam shot both Sullivan and himself, bringing them both back to the world. Cobb received a check for $10,000―hopefully low enough to stay out of Mal's notice.

Then came the fateful day when the experiments went wrong. It was Mal's idea first to go to deeper levels. Deeper within the mind. But they died at too low a level, and they ended up in the alternate plane of limbo. The space was entirely empty; but in their experience, they lived there for fifty years, so they spent that time to build a home for themselves. They had fun in the beginning; perhaps their most memorable experiment was building a replica of Verona, which they'd once visited, and acting out the play, _Romeo and Juliet,_ in a modern setting. As time went, on, though, they settled down, keeping a consistent structure and growing old together.

There was a crucial divide, however. Cobb's perception of reality was different from his wife's. She believed they lived in reality, and he did not. To convince her in the most direct way possible, he broke into the deepest recesses of her mind. In there was her totem, the means by which she distinguished dream from reality. He took her totem, a metal top, and set it spinning indefinitely in her subconscious. It planted one idea: that the world she inhabited wasn't real. The idea stuck, and they killed themselves to escape. They woke up only hours since they'd fallen asleep.

But the idea Cobb had planted was so embedded that it could not be moved. Mal was convinced their current plane was also a dream. As in limbo, to reach reality, she believed they had to die. Up against Cobb's resolute denial, she arranged a scenario where, by all the evidence, he had flown into a rage and killed her. It was her attempt to detach him from this world she thought false. "I freed you from the guilt of choosing to leave them," she said. "We're going home, to our _real_ children." And then she jumped to her death.

It was his fault…his fault….

After that, he had to leave his children and flee the country. He found work doing what he did best: extraction. He would see his children in dreams constantly, but they would always be facing away from him, and he could never reach them. Mal also was consistently present, often playing the role of saboteur.

For a full year, he went around doing odd jobs and making connections before finally coming across someone who could do something about his situation. Japanese energy conglomerate CEO Saito recruited Cobb to perform the opposite of extraction, inception, on his business rival to get him to dissolve his father's company. Despite the skepticism of his colleague, Cobb knew inception to be possible because of what he'd done to Mal. In return, Saito would arrange for Cobb's murder charges to be cleared.

Knowing this job meant everything, Cobb gathered the best team available. For the most part, his relationship with the team remained professional. It was Ariadne, the graduate student from Paris, who wriggled her way under his defenses. He was the one to teach her; she trained using his mind as an arena to be an Architect of the dream, as he had once been. One of the first things he told her was, "Well, dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize that something was actually strange." He later encouraged her to create a totem to help her with this, like his top.

What she discovered later forced him to make personal clarifications. After admitting everyone believed he had killed his wife, he said, "Thank you…for not asking whether or not I did." Ariadne became his supportive companion throughout the mission.

They all boarded a plane with the rival CEO, Robert Fischer. In a private cabin, they sedated him and descended into his dream state. True to the experiments of the Cobbs, their plan called for them to go three levels deep. Along the way, the team manipulated Fischer into believing that his father would have wanted him to abandon the company and be his own man. Unfortunately, both Fischer and Saito died on the third level and dropped into limbo, just as the Cobbs had done. Ariadne and Cobb were forced to follow. There, Cobb confronted Mal once and for all.

"What do you feel?"

"Guilt. I feel guilt, Mal. And no matter what I do, no…no matter how hopeless I am, no matter how confused, that _guilt_ is always there, reminding me of the truth."

Ariadne was able to rescue Fischer and bring him back to complete the mission. Cobb left Mal behind to search for Saito and bring him back to fulfill his end of their deal. Everyone awoke, inception had been successfully performed, and Cobb was clear to go home.

Cobb passed through U.S. customs without any hindrance. He met his father-in-law at the airport, who drove him to the house he hadn't seen in a year. In a moment of timid, vulnerable disbelief, he tossed his totem onto the kitchen table and watched it spin. Then, he spotted his kids outside in the backyard and heard them giggling, and everything else flew from his mind. He rushed to them and lifted each of them in his arms, and they both screamed in delight. In the midst of their excited voices trying to fill him in on everything, he let the tension melt from him for the first time in years. He didn't need to hold it anymore. He turned to bring them into his home, their home―

The top was still spinning.

The smile should have left his face. It should have dropped right into oblivion. But it stayed stuck there, held by congealed packets of muscle and flesh on his cheeks. It had been a full thirty seconds since he'd started the top. It should have fallen. He kept staring at it, but it only continued its revolution. So perfect, so pristine that it was invisible.

His body felt light, and he realized he wasn't holding his son anymore. He looked down; his daughter was gone, too. He spun around again, and there they were: skipping through the lawn, looking just as happy as ever. But from the moment he'd entered, they had been laughing, chatting, clapping, _something._ Now, they were silent. They didn't even make a sound when they compressed the grass with each step.

They ran over a rise and out of sight downhill. Immediately, he went after them; but strangely, it took much longer than it should have for him to reach the rise. He panted as though he was running up a steep hill. As he neared the top of the growing hill, he finally heard something, a voice coming from every direction.

"I've missed you…."

At the top, he could finally look down at the lake. The kids lay in there, both of them, with another boy, face down in the water as though they were diving for seashells or brittle fish bones. His blood rushed with a tearing speed through his veins. He sprinted just as fast toward the lake. He blinked, and he was at the shore, as though to make up for his earlier sluggishness, now, when it didn't matter anymore. James (Simon), Philippa (Rachel), and the other boy, the older one (Henry)―he pulled them out one by one. All their faces were cold. All their legs were still, stiff. Philippa's hair was a lot darker than it had been.

"I told you not to come here. I told you this would be the end of you."

He turned them onto their backs and lined them up in a row, carefully and neatly placing their hands over their chests. He wiped at the hot, blurry mess of his eyes but only replaced the hot and salty with the cold and tasteless.

(NO, NO! PHILIPPA, JAMES, NO, WE WERE SO CLOSE, SO CLOSE―!)

(It's always the same, every time the same. They're dead, they're always dead, they're _still_ dead….)

"Let's put them at the table, Andrew."

He felt the hands cup his jaw tenderly. "Mal?" he muttered, and looked up. There was no black there. So much yellow: yellow hair, yellow dress. The flowers on her dress seemed to mock the real ones.

"We'll dry them off," Dolores reassured him. "We'll change their clothes. They'll be our living dolls."

"No." His cheeks shook violently against her palms. "I can't do this again, can't do it again."

"I love you. I love you so much."

He usually got to say it back. He was usually spared that much. Not this time. He felt his finger strain on the trigger, heard the _crack_ of the gun, and saw her face go slack. She fell backward, toppling farther than the ten of the tallest mountains. His body went numb, and then he was falling, falling with her, following her white and gaunt face to the grass and into the dirt.

"You…you set me free."

"Andrew Laeddis, born Andrew Buchanan, son of Tom and Daisy Buchanan of East Egg, Long Island. Institutionalized for the murder of his wife after she murdered all three of their kids." The man with the black bowler hat snapped his chart shut. "And you said he did what?"

"Um…he uh…." One of the two orderlies nervously rubbed at his chin with his thumb. "He…he's been using up all the toilet paper. He signed his name on all the sheets, and then he threw them at the other patients."

"An-and when he was doing that," the other cut in, "he said, he was saying, 'I don't have the diamond, it isn't here! This should cover everything.'"

"You idiots!" the man with the bowler hat barked. "You called me down for this? You made me miss shooting practice."

"Sorry."

"Fuck it. Was anyone hurt?"

"Laeddis was, almost. Some of the other guys got pretty ticked, but then he started blubbering and ran to his room."

"So there was no reason you had to bring me in here."

"I don't know! We thought Dr. Shaheen might want him moved to Ward C."

"The man's been lobotomized for fifteen years, moron. He might be accident prone, but malice is beyond him, now. Ward C is no place for him."

The orderlies shifted their feet. "Well…sorry we wasted your time."

"Me too. I've still got to file a report, though, and I have to check his status. Let me through."

The man in the bowler hat walked past the scattered insane and into the long halls of Ward A with a guard. He looked into the rooms as he passed them. There was a young, cheaply dressed man drawing a figure on the floor. Down further, on the right, there was a man with well-combed hair pointing a flashlight to the wall, flicking it on and off before his unending stare. Further, a man singing to the ceiling. Then, someone trying to dig his way out of the concrete. In the room before Laeddis', its occupant, rather anticlimactically, slept on top of his bed. The man with the bowler hat stopped at the last room on the left, and the guard unlocked the door.

Laeddis stood in the middle of the floor. His posture was relaxed, and he stared at the man with an easy, cocky smile. The man in the black hat stood opposite him.

"I met Tom Buchanan once, you know," Black Hat said after a while. "You ain't his son. There ain't no way."

He thought Laeddis might have shrugged, but nothing more.

"How far do your delusions go?" he went on. "Are you content to toy with history in your mind, or do you have to rewrite it entirely?"

Grin.

"Never happy with yourself, never happy with your lot in life…so you create. Am I right? You make masks, try to hide. But there's only one reality. You're the same man. Live with your mistakes, deal with your problems. All of them. And don't expect anyone to come along and do it all for you. They are your responsibilities. Your roles to fill."

The man with the bowler hat turned and walked from the room. He paused. "Trust me, kid," he said, somewhat warmly. "It's better that way."

He disappeared into the hall. Andrew Laeddis was no longer smiling. He only stood, stood isolated in the middle of the room, situated on an island isolated in the middle of the bay, in a time and place isolated in a singularity, when and where there was no movement forward or back―only a static change of accident.

Straightening, he adjusted his coat, walked through the threshold, and bridged the gap.

 **THE END**


End file.
